1. I thought this season could be different. I thought maybe the annual Boone Swoon wouldn’t happen. Not because I thought the clueless manager would get a clue in his ninth year on the job or that the “Run It Back” offense would be better than it was last year or that the piss poor defense that has defined this Yankees era wouldn’t constantly piss itself or that the bullpen would be trustworthy enough, but because I thought this rotation wouldn’t allow it to happen. What I didn’t account for was the manager, offense, defense and bullpen overpowering the rotation in baseball and making it irrelevant.

2. This weekend was bad. Very bad. The Yankees went from having the division lead to now being two games back of the Rays in the loss column. They were humiliated by a last-place Red Sox team that has had nothing to feel good about all season, and the Yankees gave them the four best days of their season. They lost a Cam Schlittler start in which they didn’t allow an earned run, they were dominated by Payton Tolle again, they lost a Gerrit Cole start because Cole can’t beat the Red Sox whether Rafael Devers is on the team or not and then came the grand finale: the worst loss of the season on Sunday night. The Yankees scored eight non-automatic-runner runs in four games at Fenway Park. They had three hits in each of the last three games of the series. They blew a two-run lead with Schlittler on the mound in the opener and then blew a two-run lead in the 10th inning in the finale, further improving their record and reputation as the worst road extra-inning team since the automatic runner was implemented.

3. The Yankees have now lost eight of 11. Their lead in the AL East has become a deficit for the second time this season. I thought the worst part of the weekend for Aaron Boone would be him walking onto the field in the 10th inning on Sunday with an infield glove for Amed Rosario to use with the winning run on third and one out and the current at-bat already in a 1-0 count. But then Boone sat in his office at Fenway Park and gave one of the most tone-deaf, disturbing postgame press conferences of his nine-year tenure.

“We got a really good freakin’ team,” Boone said. “We played crappy on this trip, feels bad, kind of pissed off.”

There’s nothing the Yankees love more than telling you how good they are when things go badly. Brian Cashman said the 2023 team that went 82-80, had the worst record by a Yankees team in three decades and missed the postseason entirely in a format in which 40 percent of the league gets in was “really fucking good.” After the 2024 World Series disaster, they spent the offseason telling us how good they were to win the AL pennant, never mentioning their path to a pennant was the AL Central road of the Royals and Guardians. Boone told us the 2025 team was “the best he ever managed” and that team had to play in the Wild Card Series and won one game in the ALDS. The front office decided to run it back with the same roster that got run out of the postseason, and now they want you to know how good they are after getting swept in a four-game series by the last-place Red Sox in a year in which there are two other teams in the AL above .500 and one of them is the White Sox.

4. At full strength, the Yankees have a good team. Not a “really freakin’ good” team and nowhere near a great team. After all these years, their lineup is still reliant on one bat, the rotation isn’t as sound as it’s made out to be, the bullpen has one truly trustworthy arm and after nine seasons, the manager continues to show why hiring someone who never coached, let alone managed at any level should have never been given the keys to a team coming off a Game 7 defeat with a chance to go to the World Series. He continues to speak like someone who has never won anything at the major-league level, wanting people to believe he knows what it takes to win when all he has known is postseason failure.

5. How could he only be “kind of pissed off?” He was more pissed about Jazz Chisholm bringing a lollipop out to second base (an antic he supposedly didn’t even know took place until after the game) than he was about losing four straight to a last-place team, losing eight of 11 and once again losing the division lead to the Rays. The weekend was ugly and these last two weeks have been uglier.

With no date in sight for Aaron Judge to be re-imaged and Giancarlo Stanton only going through “low-volume workouts,” the offense you see is what you get. Ben Rice and Cody Bellinger have failed miserably to carry the offense when it was needed the most. Rice is hitting .114/.139/.200 over the last nine games and Bellinger is hitting .135/.273/.162 over the last 11 games. The Yankees had a top-heavy lineup with Judge and Stanton and Trent Grisham in it, without them, they need Rice and Bellinger to not be the zeros they have been these last couple of weeks and to pray the clock doesn’t strike midnight on Paul Goldschmidt’s renaissance.

6. I have given up thinking Jazz Chisholm will do anything this season other than hit the occasional solo home run and then take 49 seconds to jog around the bases. Chisholm led off for the first time as a Yankee on Sunday night and was eventually ejected after arguing a check-swing call and throwing his helmet like the baby he is. When Chisholm isn’t sucking on lollipops at the plate or in the field or telling the media he’s going to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases or that the Yankees are going to win the World Series, he’s leaving every runner in scoring position stranded and flailing at breaking balls low and away. With each game that comes off the schedule, we are that much closer to the end of Chisholm as a Yankee.

7. I couldn’t sleep after Sunday’s loss and I found myself searching for the worst single-season OPS for a regular player in major-league history with Austin Wells now at .499. The players who finished a season with a lower OPS than Wells all played in the early 1900s. Barry Bonds had four seasons with a higher OBP than Wells’ current OPS. Despite Wells being the undisputed worst offensive player in all of Major League Baseball, over the weekend, Boone said, “I feel like he’s moving the needle right now, believe it or not.” Wells went 1-for-11 in the series and is 2-for-21 since coming off the injured list. We are now in the second half of the season as Sunday was the 83rd game and Wells has two doubles, four home runs and 10 RBIs. Stanton has six doubles, three home runs and 14 RBIs and last played on April 24.

8. The Yankees called up Oswaldo Cabrera because he had been red-hot in June and hitting left-handed pitching extremely well. The Yankees faced three lefties in a row from Thursday through Saturday and Cabrera was on the bench all three games. Then they had him play against a righty on Sunday night after having not played in any game at any level over the previous four days.

9. Every game Anthony Volpe plays shortstop for the Yankees is a game they choose not to field their best team. Volpe’s arm is a disgrace for the position at the major-league level. I watched Bobby Witt Jr. finish turning an inning-ending double play on Sunday afternoon purely on arm strength that would have never been possible for Volpe and would have led to the inning being extended. Yes, it’s unfair to compare the best shortstop in baseball to the worst everyday player in baseball since his 2023 debut, but my point is that Volpe doesn’t defend well enough to justify his hitting, and if you haven’t noticed, his little hot streak is over and he’s back below the league-average line offensively. It’s only a matter of time until his season OPS is in line with his .665 career OPS. And when it is, we will still be watching him play every day for the Yankees as we remain trapped watching the same season unfold each year.

10. Last Monday, I listed the the tough opposing probables for the next 10 games and they are 2-5 in the first seven games of the 10-day stretch. Now they get to face Casey Mize and Tarik Skubal again to close out June before beginning a July littered with games against the Rays, Dodgers and Phillies, and also the .500-or-better Cubs, White Sox, Nationals and Pirates.

With no expected return date for Judge or Stanton or Max Fried and no immediate help for the bullpen, the offense and bullpen are going to have to hit and pitch better, the defense is going to have to play major-league-caliber defense and the manager is going to have to put the best team on the field as often as possible or this swoon will make previous swoons look like a walk in the park.

1. If I told you Cam Schlittler would throw five innings and allow no earned runs with nine strikeouts and the bullpen would throw four innings without allowing an earned run in the series opener against the Red Sox, you would have likely asked how many runs the Yankees won a shutout win by. But they didn’t shut out the Red Sox. They didn’t win. They lost 6-3 as the Yankees’ defense combined to allow six unearned runs in what was an unmitigated defensive disaster.

2. “We just didn’t do a good job taking care of the ball tonight,” Aaron Boone said. “It’s just not up to the way we’ve been playing.”

I disagree. The defense during the Boone era has always been questionable at best, and of late it has been very bad. Four errors on Thursday, one on Wednesday, two on Monday, two on Sunday, one on Saturday, one on Friday. What are you talking about, Boone?

The four errors were the most the Yankees have committed this season. It was the first game the Yankees allowed six or more unearned runs and no earned runs since 1913. The Boone era is full of memorable history.

3. Austin Wells made an error with another catcher’s interference, Schlittler threw a pickoff attempt to second base away, Amed Rosario let a ground ball go through his legs and Yerry De los Santos had a fielding error. Add in a couple of pop-ups that dropped in and the defense was even worse than the box score indicates.

4. Schlittler went to a lot of deep counts in the game in what was the first time the Red Sox have ever challenged him, but if Rosario fields the grounder that went through his legs in the fifth, the Yankees turn an inning-ending double play. Instead, that miscue led to four unearned runs in the inning and a 2-0 Yankees lead turned into a 4-2 deficit. Boone said the ball Rosario couldn’t handle was “in fairness, absolutely lathered,” which was an embarrassing comment. It’s the major leagues. It’s a play that has to be made. It’s a play that Ryan McMahon and Jose Caballero make. It’s a play that Miguel Andujar makes.

“Definitely a play there that I’ve just got to make,” Rosario said. “I take responsibility there.”

Who else would take responsibility?

5. The Rosario miscue led to the first run and the Red Sox tied the game on a sacrifice fly when Jose Caballero couldn’t make an accurate throw home on a shallow fly ball. The Red Sox don’t try to score there if Cody Bellinger is in left field there, but when you have an infielder playing the outfield, that’s what you get, and the Yankees love nothing more than to have their best shortstop not play shortstop.

6. Rosario was in the lineup because the left-handed Connelly Early started. But it made no sense that Rosario was allowed to hit against the just-entered Garrett Whitlock to lead off the eighth inning. The Yankees had two left-handed options on the bench and Boone inexplicably stayed with Rosario. He struck out swinging on four pitches.

7. Offensively, it was another poor showing. The Yankees struck out 10 times, which is bad, and yet it’s not as bad as they’ve been at making contact of late. Rosario, Cody Bellinger, Anthony Volpe and Austin Wells all struck out twice. Ben Rice went 0-for-5 and Bellinger went 0-for-4. It’s going to be hard to win when those two don’t produce. Add in the inability to make major-league plays defensively, and you get the kind of result the Yankees experienced on Thursday.

8. “It’s always tough when we lose,” Caballero said. “The good thing is, there’s always tomorrow.”

Spoken like a player under Annie Boone. There’s always tomorrow … It’s only a day away.

9. Tomorrow in this instance is Friday and it will be Will Warren against Payton Tolle. Tolle dominated the Yankees for six innings in his April 23 start against them at Fenway Park. This is how the first four of those six innings went:

Strikeout
Strikeout
Strikeout
Strikeout
Groundout
Strikeout
Groundout
Flyout
Single
Walk
Single
Strikeout
Flyout
Strikeout

The Yankees finally broke through in the fifth inning when Jazz Chisholm hit the first pitch of the inning around Pesky’s Pole to tie the game at 1. Tolle pitched a 1-2-3 sixth inning and left with a 2-1 lead. The Yankees then went to work against the Red Sox’ bullpen in an eventual 4-2 win.

10. Tolle is really good, and against a lineup that is missing the right-handed bats of Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, it’s easy to envision him mowing the Yankees down like Early did on Thursday. Warren is going to have be really good and the defense is going to have to avoid producing six unearned runs for the Yankees to avoid a second straight loss to the last-place Red Sox.

1. A day after Jazz Chisholm was ridiculously playing defense with a lollipop in his mouth, the outspoken, 50/50 chaser with a .731 OPS stopped the Yankees’ three-game losing streak with a two-run, go-ahead home run in the sixth inning against the Tigers.

“I was looking for the pitch all night,” Chisholm said. “I missed it earlier in the game, so I was on it.”

The Yankees were able to overcome an early 2-0 deficit to take a 4-2 lead and hold on for a 4-3 win in Detroit.

2. Monday marked the second time this season Chisholm played in a game with a lollipop in his mouth, after taking an at-bat with one earlier this season. Aaron Boone claims he didn’t know about Chisholm batting with a lollipop in his mouth and also wasn’t aware Chisholm played defense with one either until after the game. Instead of defending Chisholm like Boone has with every opportunity (including the idiotic baserunning decision on the infield pop-up in Miami last year), Boone said Chisholm playing with a lollipop “pissed him off” and that he spoke to his second baseman about it.

“He can have all the lollipops he wants now,” Boone said after Tuesday’s game.

3. The home run was Chisholm’s sixth in June and 12th of the year, putting him just 38 away from his goal of 50. (He’s 27 stolen bases away from his goal of 50 steals.)

The Yankees needed the Chisholm home run because Carlos Rodon turned in a poor start: 5.1 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 5 K. It was the eighth start of the season for Rodon and the fifth time he failed to go at least six innings. (He has yet to get more than 18 outs this season.) Yankees starters have only gone at least six innings in two of the last seven games.

4. A day after going 7-for-34 with two walks and 12 strikeouts the Yankees went 9-for-35 with two walks and 13 strikeouts. Every Yankee struck out at least once on Tuesday, Ben Rice and Jasson Dominguez both struck out twice and Spencer Jones struck out three times.

5. Fernando Cruz, Brent Headrick and David Bednar combined for 3 2/3 scoreless innings and the defense played a clean game. It was a much-needed win in a game against a really tough opposing starter in Casey Mize. With the Rays losing to the Royals, the Yankees are now two games up in the loss column in the division.

6. Austin Wells provided an RBI double in the sixth inning that ended up being the difference in the game. It was Wells’ second double of the season. Yes, you read that right: his second double of the season in the 78th game of the season.

7. Rice is 0-for-9 with four strikeouts in Detroit and his OPS has dipped under 1.000 as he’s no longer one of two players in the majors with an OPS of at least 1.000. Yordan Alvarez stands alone at the moment. (Rice is now third in the majors behind Alvarez and Nick Kurtz.)

8. The first thing I do when I see a series against the Tigers coming up is figure out if the Yankees will see Tarik Skubal. Unfortunately, they will on Wednesday (and again next week At Yankee Stadium). Skubal missed more than six weeks after needing elbow surgery and has been OK, but nowhere near his Cy Young-winning, dominant self since returning. That doesn’t mean he won’t be that version of himself against the Yankees.

9. There has been a lot of talk about the Yankees going all out for Skubal at this year’s deadline. If it takes some combination of Will Warren/Elmer Rodriguez and other starting pitchers, sure, go for it. If it involves George Lombard Jr., no thanks. Yes, Skubal at his best is the best pitcher in baseball, but he’s not at his best, had surgery last month and can be had for just money after the season. As a Scott Boras client, Skubal is going to free agency no matter what happens between now and the end of the season, so him going to the Yankees and pitching well or enjoying his time there won’t matter. Any team could use Skubal, even with one with the Yankees’ starting pitching, but they don’t need him to win a championship. Starting pitching won’t be the reason the Yankees don’t win the World Series.

10. Ryan Weathers gets the ball in the series finale and will look to build off his most recent dominant start against the White Sox. The last time Weathers was coming off a strong start he proceeded to have three starts in a row allowing five-plus earned runs, so there’s no telling what version of Weathers will show up on Wednesday. For as good as the Yankees’ rotation is and has been, right now, aside from Schlittler, there’s no telling what any of the other four starters will give you. But with Skubal on the mound, Weathers will need to be as good as he’s been all year for the Yankees to win this series.

1. In the last two weeks, the Yankees have gotten two games postponed, one to late August and one to late September. The first postponement came against the Rays when they were hotter than hot. The next day, the Yankees beat them and the Rays are 3-10 since with the Yankees having cut a seven-game deficit in the loss column down to one. The second postponement came against the Red Sox with the Red Sox having the pitching advantage with Ranger Suarez against Will Warren, and the Yankees without Aaron Judge. Instead, the Yankees were able to start Cam Schlittler against Suarez, won the game and prevented a game without Judge from being played. In the moment, these postponements sucked because postponements suck. In the big picture, these two postponements were blessings.

2. Before Max Fried got hurt, it looked like Ryan Weathers had saved his rotation spot in the battle to be the fifth starter over Will Warren with Carlos Rodon returning. Then Fried went on the injured list and the battle ended with the Yankees needing both Weathers and Warren in the rotation. There’s still a chance the Yankees need both when Fried returns because someone else could get hurt or they could go to a six-man rotation, but if not, it seems like Weathers could be the one to lose his spot. Friday was Weathers’ third time allowing five earned runs in his last four starts. He gave up two home runs to the Red Sox in Friday’s 5-3 loss.

3. Brian Cashman has been trying to find a young, controllable starter through trade since he became general manager nearly three decades ago and Weathers is his latest attempt to conquer that goal. There’s a chance Weathers will work out and be what so many (Jeff Weaver, Javier Vazquez, Michael Pineda, Nathan Eovaldi, Sonny Gray, Jameson Taillon, etc.) weren’t, but so far he’s looked an awful lot like all of the other names that have failed to be consistent performers in the role.

4. Here is what I wrote before the weekend series:

The new expected ceiling of runs for the foreseeable future is four. Anything more than that will be a surprise and anything less than that should be expected. But as I wrote last week, the Yankees are dominant when they score four runs … the Yankees are 32-9 when they score four runs. That’s all they need to do: score four runs and have a 78 percent chance of winning.

The Yankees scored three runs on Friday and lost. Then they scored six runs on Sunday and won. Five of the six runs on Sunday came in an eighth-inning explosion against the Red Sox’ bullpen that included two home runs from Cody Bellinger and Jazz Chisholm. A loss on Sunday would have been crushing because it would have meant wasting another Cam Schlittler performance (5.1 IP, 1 ER) and with the offense and the injured list what they are, the Yankees can’t afford to waste Schlittler starts.

5. The Yankees can’t afford to give away outs either and they are willingly doing so every time the lineup is posted and Anthony Volpe’s name is in it. On Sunday, Volpe’s weak arm led to the Red Sox’ first run when Volpe was unable to throw the ball home despite having ample time to get the runner on a bad send. It’s a play every major-league shortstop should make, and it’s a play that likely every major-league shortstop other than Volpe does make. While Volpe was letting the Red Sox tie the game at 1 , the Yankees best shortstop was standing in right field watching it unfold.

6. Volpe left the bases loaded in his second at-bat on Sunday and left the go-ahead run in scoring position in his third at-bat. He finished the weekend 1-for-7 with a walk. His OPS is down to .644 on the season. He was undeservingly recalled nearly a month ago and has done nothing to be worthy of remaining in the majors. He can’t hit, he can’t field and he can’t throw. His “hot” start has turned into a mirage just like it did last year and the year before that and the year before that. Without Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton (and even Jasson Dominguez), the Yankees need to optimize on the margins as much as possible. They need to squeeze every last percentage point out of their win probability added on offense and defense and playing Volpe at shortstop hurts both. At this point, if you like Volpe, you don’t like the Yankees.

7. J.C. Escarra got sent down before the weekend only to be recalled because Austin Wells went on the injured list with cervical headaches. I’m guessing Wells’ recent change in catcher’s mask is related to the headaches. But if Wells has been experiencing headaches severe enough to send him to the IL, why has he continued to play? Either he didn’t say anything, which hurt him and the team, or he did say something, and the team continued to play him. I think it’s the latter. Given the way past injuries have been handled by the Yankees, it’s likely Wells said something and it was disregarded. When he went to the equipment team and asked to use the hockey goalie mask instead of the traditional catcher’s mask he has always used, didn’t they question the change? Didn’t they want to know why?

8. The headaches aren’t an excuse for Wells, but they will be used as one. He has been catching full games without issue, and he has looked as bad at the plate as he has dating back to last season. So underperformance isn’t anything new for Wells. He has one more hit, as many home runs and seven fewer RBIs than Stanton this season and Stanton hasn’t played since April 24.

9. A six-game road trip to Cleveland and Toronto will be tough. I would sign up for 3-3 right now given the Yankees’ offense and knowing that Boone is going to force idiotic decisions like Volpe at shortstop and batting sixth or seventh in at least half the games on this trip. This is how the probables will likely play out:

Monday: Will Warren vs. Gavin Williams
Tuesday: Gerrit Cole vs. Slade Cecconi
Wednesday: Carlos Rodon vs. Parker Messick
Thursday: OFF
Friday: Ryan Weathers vs. Braydon Fisher/Spencer Miles
Saturday: Cam Schlittler vs. Kevin Gausman
Sunday: Will Warren vs. Patrick Corbin

The Yankees are getting a gift by avoiding Trey Yesavage.

10. The Yankees will open the road trip against Williams, who they hit pretty well last week in the Bronx with three runs in 5 1/3 innings off him. (It didn’t matter because Cole was throwing batting practice.) Warren has only made one career start against the Guardians (last April), so that should play into the Yankees’ favor at least the first time through the order. I expect Warren to pitch well, but I have no expectations for the offense and won’t until Judge returns (and even then I have tempered expectations with the ‘Run It Back’ offense). But the offensive goal remains the same: Score four runs and (likely) win.

1. The Yankees beat a team with a winning record! Their 2-1 win over the Guardians on Thursday marked their fourth win of the season against teams better than .500 (though that stat is somewhat misleading since they lost a series to the Athletics in April when the A’s were over .500). The Yankees are the only team in the majors with fewer than eight wins against winning teams.

2. It wasn’t easy. The Yankees produced only five hits (one for extra bases) and two walks in the game. Slade Cecconi started for the Guardians with the third-worst ERA in the American League, and despite Michael Kay and Paul O’Neill spending multiple innings talking about how bad Cecconi has been and how he can’t strike anyone out, Cecconi threw six innings of one-run ball with four strikeouts. Unfortunately, that’s going to be life for the Yankees’ offense without Aaron Judge.

3. Judge is likely to be out for more than two months with a stress fracture in his ribs that the Yankees needed multiple days to diagnose. That’s not anything new for the Yankees when it comes to diagnosing an injury for Judge. Judge punctured a lung in September 2019 and it wasn’t diagnosed properly until spring training in 2020. The Yankees’ offense has gone as Judge has gone for the last decade and now it’s hard to see it going anywhere often without him.

4. The idea Judge is “expected to return this season” inspires very little confidence. The Yankees are batting close to 1.000 in being wrong on injury diagnoses and injury timelines during the Aaron Boone era. It’s why Boone freaked out on reporters asking him about what the latest specialist Judge is expected to see specializes in. It was a bad look for Boone made worse when he had to check with the team’s public relations head, only for the public relations head to say he didn’t know and would have to look into it. Not knowing what the specialist specializes in who your best player — whom you still owe more than $200 million — is going to visit isn’t a big deal. Nothing to see here. Maybe they can start ramping Judge up in a couple of months without re-imaging him like they did Luis Severino in 2019, only to eventually say in hindsight they should have re-imaged Severino before starting his throwing program.

5. The last time Judge missed an extended period of time was during 2023. Judge got hurt at Dodger Stadium on June 3, wasn’t in the lineup the next day and didn’t play again until July 28. The Yankees went 19-23 in his absence. He went on the injured list on pace to challenge his record-setting home run total from the year before. When he came back, his OPS dropped by 113 points and the Yankees went 27-30 and missed the playoffs.

6. These Yankees aren’t going to miss the playoffs, but they may not win the division without Judge for so long. The Yankees’ roster is built under the assumption that Judge won’t just be a superstar, but an otherworldly, once-in-a-generation player. When he’s anything other than the best hitter on the planet, the Yankees are just another team. It’s not a coincidence the Yankees are 11-12 since May 6 and that during that time Judge has a .677 OPS. He’s the single-most important player on the roster.

7. The Yankees as a whole are better equipped to handle life without Judge than they were in the past. They have the best rotation even without Max Fried. That alone is enough to prevent lengthy losing streaks and keep them in nearly every game. But the way they will have to win now will look a lot like it did on Thursday when they eked out two runs and needed a strong starting effort and a shutdown relief effort. The new expected ceiling of runs for the foreseeable future is four. Anything more than that will be a surprise and anything less than that should be expected. But as I wrote last week, the Yankees are dominant when they score four runs. It didn’t show against Cleveland because Cam Schlittler had the worst start of his career and Gerrit Cole was serving up batting practice, but the Yankees are 32-9 when they score four runs. That’s all they need to do: score four runs and have a 78 percent chance of winning.

8. If you thought the Yankees’ lineup was inconsistent and frustratingly bad before, well, you’re about to see a whole other level of it. The lineup went from three hitters to now two (Ben Rice and Cody Bellinger). There’s possibly a third in Paul Goldschmidt until the clock strikes midnight on his turn-back-the-clock production. Efforts like the one Cecconi had on Thursday are going become the norm. A lineup made up of two-thirds of batters who would do anything to have and maintain league-average metrics is going to be less fun to watch than it has been. The Yankees desperately need Giancarlo Stanton and Jasson Dominguez to return and they needed them back yesterday.

9. Ryan Weathers will get his first taste of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry on Friday night. Weathers has only faced three current Red Sox before, and they have all homered off of him. Weathers has allowed five earned runs in two of his last three starts, and that’s not going to cut it ever, let alone without Judge. Weathers needs to be the pitcher who’s capable of dominating like he did two weeks ago against the Rays or something close to that.

10. Former Yankee Sonny Gray goes for the Red Sox. Gray deserves to be booed endlessly. Not for his performance with the Yankees necessarily (which was good in 2017 before being putrid in 2018), but because of how he would assess his horrible performances with the team, always citing “good stuff” no matter how atrocious he was, and for the way he talked about his time with the Yankees this past winter, saying he never wanted to be traded there in 2017, even though he wrote a piece in The Players’ Tribune following the trade stating the opposite. I’m expecting Gray to pitch extremely well on Friday because that’s what ex-Yankees do against their former team. Weathers needs to be just as good, if not better, for the depleted offense.